PORTAGE -- Just when you thought the Air Zoo was as fun as it could get, it got a little funner.

Funner? Excuse the grammatical goof-up, but I just came down from a fantastic flight in a 1929 New Standard D-25 biplane. Open cockpit, no less, and the breathless exhilaration might cause some punctuation fluctuation.

Whew!

The Air Zoo is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and in addition to offering free admission through Sept. 30, it also is giving patrons a chance to soar the skies in a fantasy of flight.

WHAT: Waldo Wright's Flying Service flights at the Air Zoo in Portage.

COST: $69.95 per person for a 15-minute flight on a 1929 New Standard D-25 biplane. No age limit. Age 2 and younger can fly for free. $229 per person for a 30-minute flight in a 1934 Stearman. During the flight, riders get to fly the plane and can perform some of the same stunts performed in World War II.

The flights aren't complimentary, but the experience will set you free. The youngest passenger has been 6 months old, and the infant promptly fell asleep. The oldest, 94, stayed wide awake throughout the flight.

"This is an extension of the Air Zoo," said Rob Lock, owner and pilot of the D-25 and also of a World War II primary trainer biplane, a PT-17 Boeing Stearman that is available for flight this summer.

"Inside the Air Zoo, you see planes, read about them, touch them," said Lock, a 42-year-old, 6-foot-10-inch commander of the skies. "Out here, we give you a chance to actually fly in the aircraft."

After jumping into (not out of) the biplane Wednesday morning, I'm here to tell you that there's nothing like an open cockpit to make the friendly skies a whole lot friendlier. The sound of the propeller, the whoosh of the wind, the smell of the exhaust -- all in the comfort of vintage leather seats -- is sensory-filled flight in its purest form.

We have become accustomed to the sterile, silent metal tubes of commercial jet travel where the feeling of flight is all but lost. That's travel, not flight.

Flight, not travel, is what I was lucky enough to experience on a bright blue Wednesday morning.

Biplane ride brings 'the romance back to aviation'

It was a beautiful day for flying, and the 75 mph speed provided just enough wind to offer thrilling comfort from the sizzling temperatures.

Loops and rolls and angled turns made for a dipsy-doodling, oodles-and-oodling 15 minutes of fun.

But don't misunderstand. This is not a thrill ride meant to scare. It's a family-friendly, no-fright flight.

Whether you've never flown or if you've been on a thousand commercial flights, the open air at 1,000 feet is an experience 1,000 times more memorable than the red-eye to L.A.
The first-time flyer is exactly for whom the New Standard was designed. It was not meant for long distance; rather it was intended to get people used to the idea that flying was safe and enjoyable. Barnstorming was its purpose, along with a little bootlegging.

The very plane that is at the Air Zoo now was used for boot-legging runs from New York to Canada and was confiscated by federal agents after such a run in 1933, Lock said.

More than 1,000 pounds of Canadian booze was stuffed into the cockpit when the plane was seized on a farm owned by Joseph Kennedy in Glens Falls, N.Y. This plane was part of the early Kennedy bootlegging enterprise that made the family countless millions.

So, not only does the Air Zoo's D-29, open-cockpit flight offer a unique brand of fun, it also lets you in on an under-the-table history lesson.
Exhilaration and education. Seems to be an Air Zoo theme.

Jeff Barr can be reached at jbarr@kalamazoogazette.com or (269) 388-8581. His columns appear Sundays in the Gazette and online during the week.